docs: def _columnsFromASCII(self, filename):
          """Following synphot/TABLES, ASCII files may contain blank lines,
          comment lines (beginning with '#'), or terminal comments. This routine
          may be called by both Spectrum and SpectralElement objects to extract
          the first two columns from a file."""
  
          wlist = []
          flist = []
          lcount = 0
          if filename.lower().startswith(('http://', 'ftp://')):
              lines = get_file_contents(filename)
          else:
              with open(filename) as fs:
                  lines = fs.readlines()
          for line in lines:
              lcount += 1
              cline = line.strip()
              if ((len(cline) > 0) and (not cline.startswith('#'))):
                  try:
                      cols = cline.split()
                      if len(cols) >= 2:
                          wlist.append(float(cols[0]))
                          flist.append(float(cols[1]))
                  except Exception as e:
                      raise exceptions.BadRow("Error reading %s: %s" % (
                          filename, str(e)), rows=lcount)
  
          return wlist, flist